For years Internet Explorer 6 was the bane of every web developers life but as with all great tales it seems the characters change but the story always remains the same. While IE6 is generally not expected to be catered for by developers these days its equally twisted offspring IE7 still is. Normally when I run need to test or fix Internet Explorer issues I just boot up a XP virtual machine and try and replicate what ever dramas the end user is experiencing. But the other day I was away from my normal desktop with no copy of Windows handy so running a VM wasn’t an option.
For years I used rely on the ies4linux project to get IE running under Linux project to get Internet Explorer working for me, but unfortunately the project no longer seems that active so a new way had to be found. Luckily I found it can be done through wine tricks which is actually easier than the original method.
So here I will run you through the process of installing Internet Explorer 7 on your Ubuntu box with Wine this way you can still manage some basic testing without having to worry about getting a complete copy of Windows.First up make sure your system has Wine & Winetracks installed:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.2 winetricks
If you look under your applications menu you should now have a Wine subfolder with an entry called “Winetricks” click on this this to get started.
Select the option labelled “Install a Windows DLL or component”.
Then select your chosen version of Internet Explorer to install, be warned though don’t get greedy and try an install them all under the same Wine prefix as they wont play together nicely.
Form here it should be pretty smooth sailing just accept the EULA which you are breaking by installing on Linux and you should be good to go!
At the end it will say you need a reboot just hit the “Restart now” option, it won’t actually reboot your system Wine will simply simulate a reboot for it. After the process completes simply run:
wine ‘C:Program FilesInternet Exploreriexplore’
For a somewhat buggy but “good enough” version of Internet Explorer on your Ubuntu box.